A five-part descent into the illusion of autonomy, where biology writes the script, reason provides the excuse, and the self is merely the echo of its own conditioning. This is a follow-up to a recent post on the implausibility of free will.

You Cannot Originate Yourself

The causa sui argument, and the final collapse of moral responsibility

“If you cannot cause yourself, you cannot cause your choices.
And if you cannot cause your choices, you cannot own them.”

Everything until now has pointed to erosion:

• Your choices are state-dependent.
• Your identity is cumulative, not authored.
• Your evaluations are judged by compromised observers.

But here, finally, we strike at the bedrock.

It isn’t merely that you are manipulated.
It isn’t merely that you are misperceived.
It’s that you never could have been free, even in theory.

Because you did not make yourself.

The Causa Sui Problem

To be ultimately morally responsible, you must be the origin of who you are.

• You must have chosen your disposition.
• You must have selected your values.
• You must have designed your will.

But you didn’t.

You emerged:

• With a particular genetic cocktail.
• Into a particular historical moment.
• Through particular developmental experiences.
• With particular neurological quirks and vulnerabilities.

And at no point did you step outside yourself to say:

“I would like to be this kind of agent, with this kind of character.”

You were thrown — as Heidegger might say — into a situation not of your choosing, with equipment you didn’t request, subject to pressures you couldn’t anticipate.

And everything you think of as “yours” — your courage, your laziness, your generosity, your rage — is the unfolding of that original unchosen situation.

No Escape via Reflexivity

Some will protest:

“But I can reflect! I can change myself!”

But this, too, is a mirage.

Because:

• The desire to reflect is conditioned.
• The capacity to reflect is conditioned.
• The courage to act on reflection is conditioned.

You didn’t author your ability to self-correct.
You simply inherited it — like a river inheriting a particular gradient.

Even your rebellion is written in your blueprint.

Freedom by Degrees Is Not Freedom

The compatibilist fallback — that freedom is just “acting according to oneself” — collapses under causa sui.

Because the self that acts was never authored. It was configured by prior causes.

If you cannot be the cause of yourself,
then you cannot be the cause of your actions in any ultimate sense.

Thus:

• No ultimate credit for your virtues.
• No ultimate blame for your vices.
• Only causal flow, chemical procession, narrative stitching after the fact.

The criminal and the saint are both unlucky configurations of biology and circumstance.

TL;DR: No Self, No Sovereignty

• To be responsible, you must be causa sui — the cause of yourself.
• You are not.
• Therefore, you are not ultimately responsible for your actions.
• Therefore, free will — as traditionally imagined — does not exist.

There is choice.
But there is no chooser behind the choice.
Only the momentum of prior conditions, impersonating agency.

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Series Summary: Unwilling Steelmen

A five-part descent into the illusion of autonomy

• Constraint is not freedom — the piano plays itself.
• Continuity is not identity — you are sediment, not sovereignty.
• Manipulability disproves authorship — your will can be bent invisibly.
• Others misjudge you — through their own distortions.
• You cannot originate yourself — and thus cannot own your acts.

What remains, if not free will?
Something perhaps stranger — and possibly, more humane:

A universe of actors who deserve understanding, but not blame.
Compassion, but not judgment.
Help, but not hagiography.